


Yours and Never Yours

by zeldadestry



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: 100_women, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:13:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7053226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I can't trust him...but I wish I could."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yours and Never Yours

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 86, "weakness", for 100_women fanfic challenge  
> Alternate Universe: Lana's the alien, not Clark

She never needed much sleep, but now she barely gets two, maybe three, hours a night. 

 

He understands there’s something special about her, that she’s not like other people. He would have to know, she’s too small for there to be any other plausible explanation for her rescue of him from his sinking car. The important questions lie beyond. How much does he know? Does he know she’s an alien, not a meteor freak? Does he know about Kryptonite? Does he know it can hurt her? And what does his father know?

Even if she believed Lex’s repeated claims that he loves her and wants to take care of her, wants to be with her forever and never let her down, never hurt her, the fact that Lionel is his father would be enough to make her cautious.

As it stands, it’s even worse than that. 

 

“Sometimes, I feel sorry for you,” he says.

The words disturb her, but it’s his stare that makes her step back. For years, the way he could sometimes be so passionate, and other times so cold, confused and even fascinated her. Now, though, it scares her. “Why would you?”

“You wanted me. And I was never going to let you go. You didn’t understand that. You were so young.” He breaks their gaze, then, sliding his eyes down to the floor, to her bare feet, like maybe he imagines his penance beginning there, his belly on the ground, his lips brushing across the tops of her toes. “But you played me,” he continues, lifting his chin, and now she knows he’s shifted into defiance, the mask he wears sometimes to battle his father. “Showing up at my home so late at night, bursting into my bedroom, telling me you’d decided to be with Clark. You knew exactly how I’d react.”

“I hoped,” she challenges him right back. “I knew what I wanted, yeah, since when is that a crime?” 

 

Lana could work primarily from home, if she wished, but she likes her small corner of the Planet office, the rickety desk she theoretically shares with the theater critic, but, since he never stops in, is in practice entirely her own. Lex gave a press conference earlier today and she knows, from the way conversations abruptly cease as people pass by her and then start up again once they’re beyond her, that everyone’s talking about it.

“I know he’s your boyfriend,” Lois says, when she appears, shortly before one, for their usual lunch date, “but no matter what he says, I never believe him.”

“Why would you?” Lana says, double checking that her latest draft saved. “He’s an excellent actor.” When she raises her head she finds Lois staring back at her. “Don’t frown like that, you’ll get wrinkles.” 

“Lana, you practically live with the guy.”

Lana closes her laptop. “And?” She stands up and grabs her bag. “It’s warm out there, right? I don’t need a jacket?”

“You can borrow mine if you do,” Lois says, still watching her. She manages to keep quiet until they’re a block from the building. They walk close together, arms brushing, so that, even over the street noise, Lois doesn’t have to raise her voice much for Lana to hear her. “Are you really saying you don’t trust him?” 

“I wasn’t making a declaration, Lo, I was only explaining why I’m not surprised that you, one of the most skeptical people alive, find him difficult to trust.”

“I’ve seen you two together. You look happy when you’re with him.”

“That’s because I love him,” she says. 

“But you don’t trust him.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Lana snaps.

“You may love him, but I love you, Lang, and I’m telling you, if you don’t trust him, then it’s not a healthy relationship.”

“I can’t trust him,” Lana finally says. Lois won’t understand, not now, though Lana can imagine one day telling her why, explaining. No, Lois won’t get what she means, but Lana knows its significance. It’s never a question of if she could choose to trust Lex, take that risk, it’s that she absolutely can’t. It’s life or death, and it’s not only her own, if it were, she’d be free to make the choice. Anyone she saves, everyone she helps, she can’t do any of that if Lex has her locked up, a prisoner in one of his or his father’s labs. “But I wish I could.” 

Lois nudges her shoulder against Lana’s. “Tell me the truth. It’s the sex, isn’t it?”

Lana laughs. “Yeah, that’s definitely part of it.”

 

Sometimes Lex kisses like all he wants is to taste her, fucks like all he wants is to be inside her.

But that’s only some of the time. There are other ways he acts, treats her, the times when he’s so rough it would hurt badly if she weren’t more than human. And she doesn’t know what’s scarier, the possibility that he knows that or the possibility that he doesn’t, that he might not care, not really. 

And then there are times when he says to her, pleads, almost, “Tell me you love me,” and she does, with her words, with how she touches him, and she feels like she’s saving him again, like she did in the moment after they crashed into each other’s worlds, she’s bringing him back from the brink.

 

Most of the time when she spends the nights with him, she closes her eyes after he falls asleep and just thinks. Remembers. She’s got what in a human would be called “Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory” and it can be nice, even more than that, wonderful, to just be back there- in a past where she doesn’t know yet what she is, those few years when she got to be a child- got to be human. 

Sometimes, when she does manage to actually fall asleep, she wakes up to find the bed empty.

 

Tonight, he’s in his office, he’s on the phone, and all she needs to hear him say to set her anxiety off is: “Whatever it takes.” 

“You’re the boss,” the woman on the other end of the line replies.

Lana pushes the door open without preamble, letting him know she’s there, that she heard him, without pretense.

“Call me once you’ve initiated phase one,” Lex says, and ends the call. His head is turned enough to have her in his periphery, but he doesn’t look towards her. Maybe he can’t bring himself to do so. He’s always been, hasn’t he, a little in awe of her, and probably hated her for that, too. “If you were going to leave me,” he says, “it should probably be now.” She starts to move towards him but he holds up a shaking hand and she halts. “Seriously,” he says, his voice no more than a whisper. “You should leave me.” 

“Lex.” His eyes fall shut when she says his name.

“Go. Don’t ever come back.”

She dresses so slowly in his bedroom, thinking he might change his mind, both hoping for and dreading it. Once she’s finished, she picks up her bag and carefully clears away the few things she’s ever left at his place.

 

This is freedom, she reminds herself, as she stands on the subway platform, waiting for her train, freedom for both of them. This is better, for both of them. 

She believes what she’s telling herself but, more powerful than that, she wishes it were otherwise. Maybe some day she’ll be able to accept this necessary separation, though somehow she doubts he ever will.


End file.
